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Performance Regulation
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Pursuant to Article (55) Law No (2) of 1998, as amended, one of the Bureau's functions is to establish and enforce technical and performance standards. A number of the Bureau's duties under the Law (Article (54)) also require it to establish, monitor and enforce technical and performance standards.
Firms with significant market power, unless constrained by effective regulation, may be able to abuse their dominant position in one of two ways:
- By increasing prices; and / or
- By reducing the quality or quantity of their outputs.
Regulating prices without corresponding regulation of outputs runs the risk that companies will be able to increase profits at the expense of service quality. For this reason, companies are required under their licences to adhere to Standards of Performance determined with the approval of the Bureau. For example:
- ADWEC's licence requires it to comply with generation and desalination security standards (GSS and DSS).
- TRANSCO's licence requires it to prepare and comply with security standards and criteria for measuring its performance on system security, availability and quality of service.
- Similarly, both distribution companies' licences require them to prepare and comply with the distribution security standards, Guaranteed Standards and Overall Standards, and customer complaint handling procedures.
All licensees who operate transmission or distribution systems are required to report monthly on their performance in maintaining system security, availability and quality of service.
Information on the performance of sector companies is provided in the Bureau’s Annual Report under the Publications section
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